When we went to Denmark we knew how popular cycling was and assumed that spares would be readily available. Not so, everybody rides sit up and beg roadsters with internal hub gears, if any. They do not have spares for touring bikes, derailleur gears, or even correct sized inner tubes. The bike shops try to help as much as they can, but they can only do so much without the parts. We got the impression that it would be a similar story in the Netherlands and Italy.

Maps in a scale of about 1:100,000 are about right for cycling.

We got a great set of maps of the Netherlands at the ANWB (the Dutch motor club) office in Amsterdam. The good thing was that they divided the country into logical areas, with some maps landscape orientation and others portrait. To allow this, some maps had considerable overlap, rather than using a strict grid system. They came in a plastic pouch with a guide book that we threw away because it was heavy and in Dutch.

We are considering GPS, but the technology is moving so fast that it would be out of date by the next holiday. We will probably leave it until GPS enabled cell phones are more common.